Archive for January, 2011

DAVID HILLIARD creates multi-paneled color photographs, often based on his life or the lives of people around him. His panoramas allow the artist to direct the viewer’s gaze across the image surface letting narrative and time unfold. David received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1992 and his MFA from Yale University in 1994. He worked for many years as an assistant professor at Yale University where he also directed the undergraduate photo department. Additionally he taught at Harvard University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He’s currently an assistant professor in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art. Hilliard exhibits his photographs both nationally and internationally and has won numerous awards including a Fulbright Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Yancey Richardson Gallery in NY, Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta, Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, and LA Galerie in Frankfurt represent his work. In 2005 a collection of his photographs was published in a monograph by Aperture. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the Cranbrook Art Academy. I like also how David Hillard focuses on capturing his life. I like that the images he captures are very intimate with others but what I like the most is how he uses seperate frames of the same place to show the final piece of the person who is being captured. I feel the braking up of the images makes the photograph look more intermate. When looking in to each frame it ends with a really unique story of the person he is capturing, it shows a very good visual look of what the place is also like around these different people.

This was the first job that I went on with the reporter Martin Bagot and photographer Joe Bailey. This was a storie that the paper wanted to do as this was hot on the news and all the newspapers including national newspapers and also tv reporters want to get the storie from Sian. Sian is an FA lineswoman had sexist remarks made about her behind her back and these sexist remarks came from Richard Keys and Andy Burton who are tv reporters, these remarks went live. It was a big issue because she was part of the FA and even though she is young and still in her steps of her career this could make her really big as she is now noticied in the public. The Coventry Telegraph had met Sian before as they had done a few stories on her, so they did have her number aswell as her address to where she lived, when we got there the tv reporters, journalists and photographers were all dotted around her house. Joe and Martin did feel that nothing would be said as she is part of the FA so she has to watch what she says as it could turn out the wrong way for her. She teaches at a school in Longford so we do go there and not a lot of people know what she works there as a second job. We did get to speak with the head teacher but that day it was not possible to talk to Sian. Joe and Martin said if they could get the storie it then could make themeselves well known as it is big at the time. I did find it exciting trying to find Sian to see if we could get an interview but there was no chance in getting an interview with her.

Imogen Cunningham began to take photographs in 1901 while she was a student at the University of Washington. She was attracted to photography by the work of Gertrude Kasebier, an internationally known pictorialist. “I kept thinking all the time ‘1 wish I could be as good as Gertrude Kasebier’” Her career began with a part time job in the Seattle studio of Edward S. Curtis, more famous for his remarkable documentation of the North American Indian than for the portrait work from which he made his living. There she learned to make platinum prints in both quantity and quality.

She won a scholarship for foreign study and attended photographic courses at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden Germany, in 1909. The school had recently revived its photographic department under the direction of Robert Luther, a photo scientist of international fame. While abroad she visited Alvin Langdon Coburn in London and upon her return to America in 1910, Alfred Stieglitz. From both she gained great inspiration.

On returning home she opened a studio in Seattle, and soon won national recognition not only for her portraits but for her pictorial work. A portfolio of these pictures was published in Wilson’s Photographic Magazine in March, 1914. There she stated a philosophy which has guided her ever since: “One must be able to gain an understanding at short notice and close range of the beauties of character, intellect, and spirit so as to be able to draw out the best qualities and make them show in the outer aspect of the sitter. To do this one must not have a too pronounced notion of what constitutes beauty in the external and, above all, must not worship it. To worship beauty for its own sake is narrow, and one surely cannot derive from it that esthetic pleasure which comes from finding beauty in the commonest things.”

I have been looking at Imogen Cunninghams work, from her book called on the body. The images in the book are really fascinating to look at, it shows these women and also men aswell as childer very naturally. I like mostly how her work is set in the natural woodland, the natural life really shows the beauty of nudity in each of the photographs. I also like how she capture close ups of the models faces as they pose naked, these photographs each show the persons expression in their face as they pose so confidently. She also uses lighting focusing on the nude body and also outlining the body.

To be honest I have found it hard getting work with other photographers and especially studio as it feels they do not want to help students that want to gain experience. I have contacted photographer that work for newspapers and magazines and I found that they were very helpful and they are still asking around their contacts.

I am going to a nursery to photograph the children as they work for the parents of the children, I have the permission. I then am going to photograph the childen with their parents, this is when they attend the after school activities. These photographs will be for the Nusery to use aswell as the parents to keep.

I will be going to get some help finally from the Coventry Telegraph after contacting them so much. I have been invitied Thursday 13 January 2011, I wont know until the evening what I will be doing with the newspaper photographer over the next few months or days throughout the professional experience.

I am still waiting to hear from the Observer in Birmingham, they are still asking around the offices and hopefully their will be some work to do with a photographer from there.

I will also be going to a studio to work with a photographer based in Coventry. I should be working with this photographer outside and also in the studio

I will also be going to London to do some work for a Drag Queen that I used for a project, while down there I will gain more contacts and more shoots.

Also I will be working with different models to help them build their portfolio for their modelling, for this I will be working from home from the studio I have set up or at the models location.

I am still looking as I have found it hard getting photographers just to offer one day to work along side them, but I will keep looking. I have two quite well known photographers that I am emailing so often and they are getting back to me with contacts, these photographers are Karen Strunks from Birmingham and Kirstin Sinclair based in London.

I am a hard working person, always interesting in learning new things and achieving new targets that I want to suceed. I love meeting new people and communicating with people is what I find very easy. I enjoy working with other people but also I can work on my own intiative, I also get on with any task that I have to complete. I also am a flexible person, I can adapt my self to any task or situation.
Education

* Good communication with others
* Working with others in a team and also on my own intiative
* Always have new ideas for my own work and also to work with other people
* I keep going to achive what I want to achive
* Good qualifications
* Very organised
* Good at Multi-tasking

Weakness:

* Public speaking to a large audience
* I can let stress get the better of me when in an written examination
* I sometimes do not stick to everything on my to do list
* I find I can try and cut things out of my work, sometimes this works better but sometimes it doesn’t

Opportunities:

* I have had some great response from photographers and hopefully working with them

* I am going to be working along side a school, working with children and also after school working with the parents and their children

* Looking forward to working with models to expand their portfolio

* Doing a project with a young woman that has an interesting storie about herself and I feel this project reflects the nude work I will be looking at over the next few weeks from the lectures at University.

Threats:

* I have found that alot of photographers do not have the time to help students or they feel they can’t help with work experience, especially alot of studios that I have asked.

* The career I want to go in is competitive but you just have to keep going.